


Those You Hold Well

by inksheddings



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inksheddings/pseuds/inksheddings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recuperation, in all its many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those You Hold Well

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **whymzycal** for the lovely beta. 
> 
> Title from a quote by Josh Billings ~ "Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing those you hold well."

"You gonna deal?" Clint asked, holding out the deck of cards.

Steve looked at Bruce again, still asleep in the hospital bed, electrodes and an IV line attached to his body. He shook his head. "Nah, you go ahead."

Steve and Clint were sitting on some kind of overstuffed lounge chair that could fold down into a single "bed" for overnight visitors. They'd gone ahead and flattened it so they'd have room for both them and their card game.

Clint shrugged and started shuffling. "A watched pot and all."

"What?" Steve asked, not taking his eyes off of Bruce, but Clint didn't say anything else until he'd dealt the cards.

"Okay, let's play."

Steve looked down at the cards Clint had laid out for him—ten cards face down in front of him, five on top and five on the bottom. Ten more cards, aranged the same way, lay in front of Clint. The rest of the deck was in a neat pile. "What are we playing again?" Steve asked.

"The grand ol' game of Garbage," Clint replied. 

An image of Thor pulling Bruce out from underneath concrete rubble, shards of glass, and all sorts of other jumbled bits of debris flashed through Steve's mind. He ground his teeth and nodded tightly. 

"I'll go first," Clint said, "so you can get the idea. It's simple, really." He drew a card from the pile and showed it to Steve; a two of clubs. Clint exchanged this card with the second card in his top row and showed that one to Steve as well: a nine of hearts. He exchanged that card with the fourth card in his second row—the ninth card out of the ten in front of him. 

"Ah, got it," Steve said.

"Queens and jacks are useless, but kings can substitute for any needed card. Once you've filled in all ten spots, you get nine new cards from the pile. Once those are done, you get eight cards, then seven—"

"Until you're down to one card."

"Yeah, exactly, the ace in the hole," Clint confirmed, continuing his turn in the game until he drew a two of hearts. "I already have a two, so this one gets discarded, face up. You can use it or draw from the pile."

Steve took the two and took his turn. "What happens when we run through all the cards in the pile?"

"Normally, we'd play with two decks of cards, but we only have the one. So, we'll just have to reshuffle the discard pile and go from there."

Bruce let out a quiet but lengthy breath, and both men looked over at him. It didn't look like he'd moved a muscle, but it was still reassuring, the fact he'd made any noise at all.

They played quietly, listening only to the crisp sound of the cards and the beeps of medical machinary. A nurse came in once to check on Bruce's IV bag and replace it with a fresh one, but he only nodded at Clint and Steve on his way out.

Steve couldn't say how much time had passed when he and Clint were on their third round of the game. He had a row of four cards in front of him, still needing an ace. Clint was down to a row of two cards, but that didn't mean he was all that much ahead. Steve had learned fast that the fewer cards you needed, the harder it was to get them.

"Fucking hell, where's that two? Any two. I'm not too proud to take a king, either," Clint said, cockeyed smile aimed at Steve. 

Steve clucked his tongue. "I'm not fond of replacements," he said, discarding a useless nine. "Rather have the real thing."

Clint stopped short of taking a card from the pile, but recovered quickly to get his needed two, which he showed proudly to Steve. "Can't argue with that."

Clint was now down to a row of one card, which meant they both needed an ace. Before anyone could draw a card, though, Tony and Natasha came in. Clint looked from one to the other with raised eyebrows and said, "You're our relief? I thought we wanted Bruce to wake up to friendly faces, not the Avengers version of Celebrity Deathmatch." 

Tony crossed his arms and jutted his chin out toward Natasha. "I suppose you'll want to be Pamala Anderson to my Tommy Lee. When, honestly, it should be the other way around. If anyone has a tattoo hidden somewhere on their body, it's you, and my chest is far deadlier than yours," he said, tapping a finger against his arc reactor.

Natasha ignored him while smoothing down the blanket near Bruce's legs. Then she eyed what was left of Clint and Steve's card game. "Oh, Garbage. I haven't played that since last weekend," she said, looking straight at Clint. 

Clint just smiled at Steve and said, "Don't ever play with Natasha. Unless she lets you start with five cards to her ten. At least."

"Garbage?" Tony interjected after looking over Bruce's chart. "Sounds kind of like the day we had."

"You are the king of subtlety, Stark," Clint said, but didn't argue the point.

Natasha pushed Clint off the lounge chair and took his place. "When I play this game, Steve, it's the Queens that cover your ass, not the Kings."

"Makes sense to me," Steve agreed as he watched Natasha take a card from the pile, turning it over to reveal the ace Clint had needed to win the game.

"God damn it," Clint said, rolling his eyes. "See what I mean?"

Tony leaned over Steve's shoulder, taking in what was left of the card game. "So how, exactly, does one play a game named after scraps, scrapings, swill, and slop and end up calling it fun?"

Steve looked at Tony, actively listening as Natasha gathered up the cards and explained her version of the rules, then at Clint, who was throwing in his own two cents on the etiquette of winning with a king (or queen) rather than an ace. Steve watched Natasha shuffle the cards and slap Tony's hand away when he tried to take over, still leaning over Steve's shoulder. Steve looked once again at Bruce, still unconscious, but getting some color (other than green) back in his cheeks. He wondered how on earth the racket everyone was making hadn't woken him up. Granted, the usual cadence of their back-and-forth felt reassuringly normal. Comfortable. At least this was true for Steve.

"Excuse me," Steve said, standing up, wanting a closer look at Bruce before he'd leave him in Tony and Natasha's capable hands. Tony just squeezed his shoulder and took over his seat, ready to play a hopefully non-violent round of Garbage with Natasha.

"All right, you two," Tony said, indicating Steve and Clint with a careless wave of his hand, "Go get your beauty rest. Thor's coming to take over for the Queen and I in a few hours."

"Who's going to keep him company?" Clint asked as he pulled on his jacket.

"I will," Bruce said, voice scratchy but loud enough to be clearly understood. "Though I'm not sure I'm up for any more garbage flung my way, not at this point in time."

"Hey, buddy," Tony greeted him softly.

Bruce held up a hand, a clumsy psuedo-wave toward all of them. 

"Well," Natasha said as she began dealing the cards. "This round we'll let the kings and queens cover all asses, yes?"

 

**end**

**Author's Note:**

> Thor did not make a personal appearance in this story, though that hadn't been my original plan. But as the story developed, he ended up staying "offscreen," so I didn't tag him as one of the characters. I feel rather guilty about that, because I still consider this a teamfic! Gah. Next time, Thor! Next time.


End file.
